Alabama, Notre Dame share history of success, but that’s about it

‘At Notre Dame, football is a religion. At Alabama, it is a way of life.”

— Howard Cosell, from the 1973 Sugar Bowl.

Yes, we know they have tradition.

Nine Associated Press titles for Alabama, eight for Notre Dame. With respect to Oklahoma and USC — we’re talking about the nation’s two preeminent college football programs.

And yes, we know about their legends.

The Four Horsemen and Knute Rockne for the Fighting Irish, Bear Bryant for the Crimson Tide. Too many faces for a Mt. Rushmore equivalent — they’d need their own mountain range.

But as we await Monday’s BCS title game, comparing these schools’ similarities only adds so much flavor to the game. It’s the differences between the two — the culture, the fandom, the history — that gives this entrée that special spice.

For instance, where else would you find such a contrary …

Fan following: You can’t find a city in the U.S. that doesn’t harbor masses of Irish fans. But if you live in Alabama, you can’t take two steps without bumping into a Tide die-hard.

Tim Prister, editor of Irish Illustrated, said that when Notre Dame whooped on Oklahoma in Norman earlier this season, it felt like an ND home game — blue-and-gold supporters overwhelming what is considered one of the country’s most ardent fan bases.

But that wasn’t unusual. Whether it’s Phoenix, San Antonio, or Winston-Salem, N.C., every time the Irish roll into town, they dominate the local airwaves regardless of record.

As for ’Bama? Well, if Notre Dame has a million fans spread out throughout a mansion, the Tide has a million stuffed in the basement. You won’t see too many crimson-and-white sweaters in states outside of Alabama — but you will see 93,000 people show up to watch the first spring scrimmage, just like you’ll see 160,000 fans roll onto campus on game day despite the stadium holding just 100,000.

“It’s 24/7/365 for Alabama fans,” said Alabama-based sportscaster Paul Finebaum. “They have three seasons — football season, spring football season, and recruiting season.”

The rivalries reflect this local-vs.-national dynamic as well, with Alabama’s most-hated foe being Auburn, and Notre Dame’s being USC.

As for the rosters? The Crimson Tide have 43 players from Alabama and just one west of the Rockies. The Irish, meanwhile, have players from 27 states, but only 10 from Indiana.

And the fans watching those teams …

They behave a little differently: Don Kausler, sports editor of the Birmingham News, said there is a certain “redneck image” that hordes of educated, dignified Alabama fans are trying to combat. But he also said that there is another faction that, when it comes to a negative public perception, thinks “I don’t care what you call us, our football team is better than yours and that’s all that matters.”

Two years ago, Alabama fan Harvey Updyke — who named one child Crimson Tyde, another Bear (after Bryant) and his dog Nick (after Nick Saban) — poisoned sacred trees on Auburn’s campus as a means of injuring ’Bama’s chief rival.

The act made national headlines and had most of the country aghast. Then again, says Finebaum, “I know a lot of Alabama fans who didn’t really have a problem with that. It’s kind of the nature of the fandom.”

Kausler experienced that nature when he first took over the Alabama football beat in Bryant’s last year. The Tide began that 1982 season having won its first five games, allowing Kausler to report the news virtually controversy-free. But once the losses began to amass, and Kausler’s stories became less flattering, angry readers repeatedly knocked over his mail box, threatened him with death, and called his house saying “we know where you live” (Kausler would usually respond by inviting them over for coffee).

Will you see ND fans engaging in similar antics? Probably not, said Prister. But such self-discipline is not necessarily due to virtue.

“Notre Dame fans are too conscious of their image,” Prister said. “I think that’s the Catholic part of it. They go out of their way to be portrayed as good Catholics, which could be obnoxious to some people, and may be why some people look at Notre Dame as having that holier-than-thou image.”

And how might one perpetuate that image? One way is by not playing in bowl games, which was Notre Dame’s practice for more than four decades. And as a result, the Irish and Tide greatly differed in …

How they built their legacies: From 1926-1969, Notre Dame did not play in a bowl game, citing an emphasis on academics. From 1926-1969, Alabama played in 23 bowl games and won 12.

The legend of Knute Rockne, “The Gipper,” and “The Four Horsemen” had planted the Irish in the forefront of America’s sports consciousness in a way that rendered the postseason unnecessary. But for Alabama, victories in the Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl, Cotton Bowl and others forced the nation to take notice, and helped usher in the Bear Bryant era.

One of those bowl victories came in 1967, when the Crimson Tide thumped Nebraska 34-7 in the Sugar Bowl to cap an 11-0 season. Nevertheless, the national championship went to the Irish, whose season had ended more than a month earlier, and whose record included a tie against Michigan State.

“I still have callers who call into my show and cry when talking about that season,” Finebaum said. “To them, it was the ring that got away.”

That is part of the reason ’Bama fans have such an unreciprocated animosity toward Notre Dame — not just because the Crimson Tide are just 1-5 all-time against the Irish, but because they feel that voters often used mystique as criteria instead of performance.

Not anymore. The perception of college football powerhouses has shifted away from ND’s favor over the past couple of decades, so while Alabama is hungry for its third national title in four years …

Notre Dame is starving: Both the Irish and the Crimson Tide have slogged through a depression over the past couple of decades, but ’Bama is the only one to have completely climbed out of it. From 1995 to 2007, every team the Tide fielded lost at least three games, and the national title was never even within sniffing distance.

Notre Dame, meanwhile, has finished in the AP top 10 just once since 1994. That said ... the potential for symmetry is fascinating.

The last time the Irish won a national title was for their 1988 season — 24 years ago — which occurred after 10 straight seasons of mediocrity. In 1964 — 24 years before that — Notre Dame won a national championship after another decade of substandard play, including a four-year stretch from 1960-63 in which it went 18-30.

Additionally, as has been well-documented, Ara Parseghian, Dan Devine and Lou Holtz each won their first national title in their third year as Irish head coach — something Brian Kelly has a chance to equal Monday night.

But as Blue and Gold Illustrated editor Lou Somogyi said, Notre Dame has to act quickly to avoid becoming a relic.

“You can only talk so much about the past,” Somogyi said. “After a while, it comes across like that 55-year-old guy who’s still wearing his high school jacket.”

A Notre Dame win would break the SEC’s six-year reign on the BCS championship.